California Golden Getaway

In the relatively juvenile history of California, going to a spot such as Nevada City, founded in 1851, can have the strange patina of a roots-chasing pilgrimage for old-school Californians. A painless drive 60 miles north of Sacramento, with increasing embrace of nature and mountain terrain as you go, takes you to another place, another time, another state of mind.

The Place to Stay (capitalization ours) is the first of many vintage buildings encountered upon arrival in historic Old Town, the National Exchange Hotel, a massive compound consuming most of its block. Cited as the oldest hotel in California and run by the Santa Barbara–based Acme Hospitality, the National Exchange is also the site of California’s first whipping post. Just saying.

But there were no visions of whippings in our very comfortable king suite, with picture windows overlooking Broad Street below. The street is an easily walkable attraction unto itself, with its well-preserved collection of 19th-century Victorian structures and businesses that catered to California’s earliest residents (and gold-seekers).

Across the street is the Mineshaft Saloon and the Nevada City Classic Café. Just up the block, from a different era in the hamlet’s past, is the Communal Café, a tip of the hat to the area’s post-hippie element. Enough said.

This is a town — and a state — essentially born from lust gone viral. Gold lust. Disreputable drifters and moral queasiness interwove with high ideals and pioneer spirit out here on the continental fringe, resulting in the seedbed of what became the mighty Golden State. We’re reminded of that grand and stardust-y legacy in Nevada City, initially settled in 1849 and dubbed Nevada (“snow-covered” in Spanish). 

History keeps pulling at your coat here, especially during a stay at the Exchange. At happy hour in the dark wood-lined, embossed gold-ceilinged bar, an impressive jazz quartet held forth, with a guest singer conjuring up the 20th-century stuff of “In My Solitude” and “You’d Be So Nice to Come To.” The bar has been here from the start of the operation, and no doubt the site of much carousing and miners’ merriment and mayhem back when.

After the swinging serenade, we were rounded up to eat dinner in the next room, where the restaurant called Lola feeds hotel residents and all comers, as one of the town’s go-to eateries. Speaking of history backstories, the restaurant was inspired by Lola Montez, the 19th-century Irish/Spanish dancer who was also the mistress of King Ludwig I, father of “Mad” King Ludwig II, who financed Richard Wagner’s operatic excesses. But we digress.

Resisting the temptation to order steak and potatoes, which would seem the successful gold miner’s choice, we went for the “Family Dinner for 2.” The delectable meal was a five-course meal with pork tenderloin (key word: “tender”), purple Japanese sweet potato with honey butter, and the agreeably decadent stuff of brûlée cheesecake dessert. 

Among the go-to lunch spots is the Deer Creek Bar & Grill, perched outside over the rushing water, where grubby miners once lurked and dreamt. The location marks the spot where the little Deer Creek connects with the mama Deer Creek. Savoring the wet tri-tip burrito, just like the Gold Miners did in days of yore.

In other meal news, breakfast went down, eagerly, over at the Heartwood Eatery, in the form of fully loaded toast (avo, egg, salmon, mayo). The easy-does-it atmosphere of this locally sourced and conscientious eatery, launched in 2017, clearly heeds modern attitudes, and is a good place to start a brief tour of the city’s deeper history, easily walkable up and down Broad Street.

Not to be self-centered, but the town is also home to a member of the journalistic sisterhood of newspapers called “The Independent.” Those words are proudly broadcast on a building, now listed on the National Register of Historic Places, dating back to 1854.

The cross-historical comparison game is hard not to indulge in this town. The Golden Era bar, built in 1856 and rebuilt after a fire in 1886, nuzzles up to the Art Deco–style City Hall, dedicated in 1932. The Hartung Building, circa 1875, is across the street from Mana Madron’es eco emporium, an example of the city’s more recently established progressive crowd cred. 

Just down a side street from the centerpiece famed and still-operational Nevada Theatre — circa 1865 and once hosting Mark Twain and Jack London — is the humble alternative radio station KVMR, and a stretch further down the street is the Tribute Trail, paying respects to the Native American heritage in the area.  

For a satisfying trip just outta town, and to yet another pieces of historical real estate, proceed on the short drive to the Empire Mining State Historic Park in nearby Grass Valley, once a super-fecund gold mine, in the 1850s, functioning through 1956. The Park is an expansive property, including hiking trails, a strange and wonderful mining museum and the so-called Bourn “cottage” (a mansion by most of our standards). It was a home for boss-man mine owner William Bourn Jr., an elaborate stone structure designed by architect Willis Polk in an English manor–styled cottage and gardens using waste rock from the mine.

Also on the property is an assortment of preserved structures from the old mine, a wash in rust and corrugated metal and exuding an antique atmosphere, mining division. The Empire compound is well worth a couple hours’ time, and suitably for the whole family and photo ops galore. 

After hanging out in Nevada City for a day-and-change and being transported to another time, place and headspace or two, heading back down to Sacramento becomes a kind of decompression process ― or compression process. It’s back to the land of AI, White House shenanigans, and other distracting, devilish goings-on. Back from the world of whipping posts and gold-dusted, early California dreaming. 

But it’s a close enough encounter to keep on your radar for future reference. (Word to the wise: if it’s possible to make your way here on weekdays, the crowds are far leaner than on the weekends — not unlike other tourist-flocked havens, such as, well, Santa Barbara.)